Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY) reported its fiscal first-quarter earnings Wednesday after the markets closed as $0.93 in earnings per share (EPS) on $2.74 billion in revenue. That compared to Thomson Reuters consensus estimates of $0.94 in EPS on $2.74 billion in revenue. In the same period of the previous year, the retailer posted EPS of $0.93 and revenue of $2.66 billion.
The company gave guidance for the fiscal second quarter in the form of a 2% to 3% increase in comparable sales and $1.18 to $1.23 in EPS. There are consensus estimates of $1.23 in EPS on $3.03 billion in revenue for the second quarter.
Comparable sales in the first quarter of fiscal 2015 increased by roughly 2.2%, compared to an increase of 0.4% in last year’s fiscal first quarter.
Also during the most recent quarter, Bed Bath & Beyond repurchased about $385 million of its common stock, representing about 5.3 million shares. At the end of May, the remaining balance of the existing $2.0 billion share repurchase program was approximately $499 million.
The company had cash and cash equivalents of $615.2 million to end the quarter, compared to the $536.6 million in the same period of last year.
So far, shares have fallen over 7% year to date. However, in the past 52 weeks shares have gained about 16%.
Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond were down 2.7% at $68.39 shortly after Thursday’s opening bell. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $75.33 and a 52-week trading range of $54.96 to $79.64.
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